My quick little jaunt up to Buffalo ended up being not so quick. The plan was to fly up on Friday, do my thing on Saturday, then fly back on Sunday. Quick and painless!

Sadly, a snowstorm in Buffalo coupled with an even bigger storm in Washington DC left me stranded for an extra day in Buffalo. Heavy sigh. Things looked scarcely better when I woke up on Monday to find that it was still snowing pretty heavily. My hosts, however, laughed at my suggestion that such a pathetic flurry would close the airport. If that’s all it took to shut down the Buffalo Airport, then the airport would never be open.
And they were right. My flight took off yesterday, albeit three hours late. Still, I was better off than a lot of other people. At the gate next to mine were a group of unhappy looking Chicago-bound passengers. Turnes out they had been waiting for something like five hours for their flight. Finally a plane lumbered over to the gate. With a big sigh of relief everyone started gathering up their bleongings in anticipation of boarding the plane. Which is when a kindly United Airlines representative got on the loudspeaker and said, “Attention Chicago passengers. Your plane has now arrived. Unfortunatly, your flight crew is still on the ground in Chicago. They will be on the next flight out but it will be at least two hours before they get here.”

It was funny because it wasn’t my flight.

So it looks like I got off easy. I left Buffalo three hours late, but otherwise everything went smoothly. My bag showed up at Dulles Airport. My car was still waiting for me in the long-term parking lot. No traffic on the drive home. The cats hadn’t gone to the bathroom anywhere they weren’t supposed to. And I had such a good time in Buffalo that enduring a few travel problems did not seem like such a big deal. But more about that in the next post.